Voltage Stability Enhancement in Wasit 400 kV Grid by Using STATCOM

The operation of Power systems becomes more significant as the demand rises continually. Due to environmental and economic constraints, the fast rise of load demand imposes electrical power systems to work near-critical limits. Electrical power systems' goal is to provide energy with suitable frequency and voltage to the consumers with minimum cost. Therefore, voltage stability has a crucial role in the environment of the power system to meet the load demand. This paper introduces an improvement on voltage stability margin by installing Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices using Static Synchrouns Compensation Device (STATCOM) in the power system under different contingencies such as load increase or decrease, transmission lines outage, and generated power reduction. The prototype of STATCOM was built with a strategy to improve the voltage level in the grid to support the system's requirements during the disturbances. The controller considers the positive and negative sequence components that appear during faults, and the contribution of STATCOM supports the faulted phase upon the viewer. Thus, the active contribution to improving the power system's performance during faults makes static compensation devices contribute to support the system during an event of increased loads or unsymmetrical faults. This paper concentrates on STATCOM performance during unsymmetrical faults in the Iraqi grid as a strong(stiff) grid. The proposed controller took in simulation (using MATLAB /Simulink) the Iraqi national grid at Wasit 400 kV with the thermal Wasit power plant (2100MW) consideration. The simulation findings demonstrate that the positive and negative current controllers in the STATCOM operate better together than they do independently, resulting in an improvement in the voltage level of the system during asymmetric faults.